By Glynn Wilson – CANNON BALL, N.D. – Sitting with your legs crossed in a campsite filled with traditional teepees along with modern RVs and tents overlooking the Missouri River here, with the sounds of wolves and coyotes off in the distance, a drum up the hill by the council fire and the occasional Red…
“Art at its highest and nature at its truest are one.” — Knute E. Westerlind, the architect of Municipal Auditorium in Sioux City, Iowa, designed in 1938 and finished in 1950 By Glynn Wilson – CHAMBERLAIN, S.D. — From this vantage point looking out from the American Creek Campground, the Missouri River looks as blue…
By Tom Goldtooth and Annie Leonard – Over the last month, thousands of Native Americans from across the country have converged to camp in and around the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota to oppose the construction of the multibillion-dollar Dakota Access oil pipeline. The pipeline, which would transfer crude oil to existing pipelines…
By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. – In the continuing drive to reduce the sources of air pollution in the environment before leaving office next January, the Obama administration has announced a new set of strategies aimed at improving air quality around the nation’s ports. An EPA report released Thursday shows that air pollution at…
By Glynn Wilson – MOBILE, Ala. — A major gas pipeline that was discovered broken and leaking at least 250,000 gallons last week in rural Shelby County, south of Birmingham near Helena, has government and industry officials hopping to contain the leak, shore up any impact on the price of gas, and assure the public…
By Glynn Wilson – After protests turned violent in North Dokota with a private company using pepper spray and attack dogs on Native Americans, the Obama administration intervened on Friday and blocked the construction of an oil pipeline on federal land. The prospect of a $3.7 billion pipeline crossing four states bordering on native lands…
By Lauren McCauley – A federal judge reportedly denied an emergency request on Tuesday for a restraining order filed by the Standing Rock Sioux in the fight over the Dakota Access Pipeline. But supporters of the Native American protest heralded the ruling as a partial victory anyway due to a stop work agreement on the…
By Glynn Wilson – Reading the national press coverage on the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service, even listening to the reporting on National Public Radio, you would think the biggest problem the parks face is a lack of visitors. The entire story is framed as if the parks were just another capitalist tourist…
By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. – On the eve of the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service, President Obama bypassed the inaction of the Republican Congress and used the power of the presidential pen to create the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument, the first national monument to preserve the landscape and honor…
EDITOR’S NOTE – For info about a free roundtrip bus on Saturday from Mobile to this demonstration go to the Facebook event page for Gulf Coast Interdependence Day. You can sign up as a volunteer and RSVP to attend and find out details about the bus and other matters. The free bus will leave from…
By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Obama administration has finalized green house gas standards and fuel efficiency rules for trucks to cut carbon pollution in the U.S., all while bolstering energy security and spurring manufacturing innovation, according to an announcement just out from the Environmental Protection Agency. The product of four years of…
By Bob Wells – STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Co. — After Randy and his group left Leadville for Salida, Colorado, I knew we had a record-setting heat wave coming so I liked the idea of staying up at high elevation. I decided to start working my way north so my next stop was Steamboat Springs, Colorado. I…
Parts of Louisiana received more than two feet of rain in recent days, causing massive flooding that overwhelmed rivers and engulfed homes and businesses. Emergency crews have rescued more than 20,000 survivors, and more than 11,000 survivors have signed up for disaster assistance. The federal government has issued a major disaster declaration for four parishes…
By Glynn Wilson – MOBILE, Ala. — As if we needed another study to tell us that global warming is speeding up and making climate change worse, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released another 300-page report Tuesday documenting the warming and changes in the climate due to the burning of fossil fuels for energy.…
Reconstruction of climate events long before the Ice Ages shows that failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions could eventually lead to temperatures rising by up to 10 degrees. – By Tim Radford – LONDON, Eng. – If the distant past is anything to go by, then climate scientists may have under-estimated the hazards of greenhouse…
By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. – The German automaker Volkswagen has admitted to cheating on emissions tests and agreed to pay more than $15.3 billion in a settlement with U.S. regulators for decieving customers and causing pollution from its diesel vehicles, according to a release just out from the Justice Department and the Environmental…
President Barack Obama took a few days to go on a working vacation this week and, to help celebrate the 100th anniverrsary of the National Park Service, the first family visited Yosemite National Park, one of the nation’s most popular national parks. In a brief speech on Saturday at Sentinel Bridge with the 2,425 feet…
Nuclear weapons, climate change, and the prospects for survival. – By Noam Chomsky – In January 2015, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists advanced its famous Doomsday Clock to three minutes before midnight, a threat level that had not been reached for 30 years. The Bulletin’s statement explaining this advance toward catastrophe invoked the two…
By Glynn Wilson – Scientists have located 39 new major sources of toxic sulfur dioxide emissions previously unreported by existing methods, according to a study published this week in the journal Nature Geosciences. A known health hazard and contributor to acid rain, sulfur dioxide (SO2) is one of six air pollutants regulated by the U.S.…
The Tennessee Valley Authority activated emergency prodecures Wednesday when high radiation levels in a main steamline were detected at Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant in Athens, Alabama. TVA detected the high radiation condition Wenesday around 3:35 p.m., central daylight time, according to an enews alert. It appears the story was broken by the Chattanooga Times…
